09 May FAILING TO RECOGNIZE FAILURE – WHAT GIANNIS AND FRUM INFLUENCERS GOT WRONG

Last week, the
Milwaukee Bucks, who
finished with the best
record in the NBA regular
season, were eliminated
from the playoffs by the
Miami Heat, the 8th seed
who barely snuck in. The
Bucks’ star player, Giannis Antetokounmpo
was asked following the game whether he
viewed the season as a “failure.” His
refreshingly raw answer went instantly viral
and was celebrated not only by secular media
and sports fans but received a substantial
amount of attention and promotion from frum
Jews on social media and “Jewish influencers,”
several of whom who labeled it “great mussar.”
A rebbe in a yeshiva even played it for the boys
in his shiur.
Giannis’ full answer to the reporter:
Do you get a promotion every year on your
job? No, right? So, every year you work is a
failure? Yes or no? No. Every year you work,
you work toward something—toward a goal,
right?— which is to get a promotion, to be able
to take care of your family, to be able to …
provide a house for them or take care of your
parents. You work toward a goal. It’s not a
failure. It’s steps to success. There’s always
steps to it. Michael Jordan played 15 years.
Won six championships. The other nine years
was a failure? … Exactly, so why do you ask
me that question. It’s the wrong question.
There’s no failure in sports. There’s good days,
bad days, some days you are able to be
successful, some days you are not, some days it
is your turn, some days it’s not your turn. That’s
what sports is about. You don’t always win.
Some other group is gonna win and this year
someone else is gonna win. Simple as that.
We’re gonna come back next year and try to be
better, try to build good habits, try to play better
… and hopefully we can win a championship.
So, 50 years from 1971 to 2021 [the Bucks]
didn’t win a championship, it was 50 years of
failure? No it was not. There were steps to it.
And we were able to win one and hopefully we
can win another one.”
While I admire and appreciate Giannis’s
sentiment and understand the power and
attraction to his encouragement, I believe his
failure to label his season a failure is more than
semantics: it is significant, even damaging.
Failures needn’t define us. The most
accomplished and greatest people of our sacred
history were not perfect and not above failure.
They became who they were because they
learned how to fail forward, how to see the
particular moment, event, decision or act as a
failure while not seeing themselves as failures.
Nevertheless, failing forward begins by
recognizing and admitting failure. Failures are
steps to success only if we pause to honestly
assess them as failures, address how they
occurred, ask what we can learn from them, and
determine how we can avoid them happening
again. Failures generate success when we take
responsibility for them, hold ourselves
accountable for them, and use them to motivate
ourselves.
When we whitewash them, downplay them,

minimize them, fail to take responsibility for
them, we cannot fix them or avoid them.
Minimizing and diluting failures by refusing to
acknowledge them and instead describing them
as part of a process, as steps on a journey,
constitutes a failure to be honest, accurate, or
accountable.
To be clear, Giannis’s life has been anything
but a failure. He was born in Greece to Nigerian
immigirants, overcame incredible obstacles
including poverty, and against all odds, got
drafted into the NBA at a young age. He
doesn’t only compete, he has emerged to be one
of the best players in the NBA and someone
described by his peers as a not only a great ball
player, but a great person.
The question from the reporter wasn’t, you
were eliminated from the playoffs, is your life a
failure. It was, you have been eliminated from
the playoffs, would you call this season a
failure. His comments are understandable taken
in the greater context of his remarkable life
story, but they are still wrong regarding the
specific question about the season.
The Bucks had the best record in the NBA this
season. When the playoffs started they were
given the best odds to win the championship,
and they were overwhelming favorites to beat
the Heat. The city, owners and fans expected
the team to do much more than have fun, do
their best, and just win one game in the playoffs.
The players, coaches and management were
paid to win, to take home a championship,
certainly to get past the first round. Anything
short of these goals was, objectively, a failure.
Identifying something as a failure doesn’t
mean beating ourselves up, being debilitated by
guilt or shame, or staying stuck in the past. It
means being honest with ourselves, taking
ownership, and holding ourselves accountable.
Teshuva, repentance, repair, and reproach
begin with Viduy, an admission of what went
wrong and a declaration of a commitment to
improve. Rav Soloveitchik said before we can
approach the Mizbeiach, the place of
forgiveness and growth, we must pass the kiyor,
look in the copper base that is made of mirrors,
stare into our reflection, and be honest with
ourselves.
We live in a time where there is growing
intolerance for pain, discomfort, or failure.
Giving everyone a participation trophy can’t
and won’t inoculate them from the harsh reality
that life will teach them one way or another that
in competition, there are winners and there are
those crowned champions. There will come a
time they may not get into the yeshiva or
seminary they want, they may not get the job
they want or the “other side” of a shidduch may
say no. When we give all children a literal or
metaphorical participation trophy, when we try
to protect and save them from feelings of
failure, pain, disappointment, we stifle their
growth, squash their drive, and set them up for
unrealistic expectations of how life and the real
world will treat them.
The Gemara in Berachos and Bava Basra says
“luchos v’shivrei luchos munachin ba’aron.”
When Moshe came down from the mountain,
saw the people worshipping the calf and
smashed the luchos, the broken and shattered

pieces were gathered, collected, and carefully
placed in the Aron to sit beside the unbroken,
complete, second set of tablets. The broken
pieces are saved to remind us that our failures
and mistakes are not to be discarded, eliminated,
and forgotten from our memories. We can only
succeed when we remember the broken
experiences and use the lessons learned as
springboards to success.
A healthier and more Torah-based approach to
the question Giannis was posed might have
sounded something like: “Yes, given our record,
our talent, and our potential, being eliminated
in the first round makes this season a failure.
We are sorry to the fans and the owners, but we
assure you, we won’t be defined by this loss or
elimination. Life is a journey, it is made up of
many seasons, and while they include failures,
we are committed more than ever to learning
what went wrong, to working harder than ever
to improve, and we hope and plan to come back
and succeed in our goal of bringing this city
another championship.”
Giannis rhetorically asked if the nine seasons
Michael Jordan didn’t win a championship
were a failure. We don’t have to speculate how
Jordan would answer. In a famous commercial
from years ago, Jordan said the following
monologue about his career: “I’ve missed more
than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost
300 games. Twenty-six times, I’ve been trusted
to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve
failed over and over and over again in my life.
And that is why I succeed.”
Rabbi Yitzchok Hutner wrote a beautiful letter
to a student who was very discouraged:
A failing many of us suffer from is that when
we consider the aspects of perfection of our
sages, we focus on the ultimate level of their
attainments, while omitting mention of the
inner struggles that had previously raged within
them. A listener would get the impression that
these individuals came out of the hand of their
Creator in full-blown form. Everyone is awed
at the purity of speech of the Chofetz Chaim,
z.t.l., considering it a miraculous phenomenon.
But who knows of the battles, struggles and
obstacles, the slumps and regressions that the
Chofetz Chaim encountered in his war with the
yetzer hara (evil inclination)? There are many
such examples, to which a discerning individual
such as yourself can certainly apply the rule.
The English expression, ‘Lose a battle and win
a war’ applies. Certainly you have stumbled,
and will stumble and in many battles you will
fall lame. I promise you, though, that after those
losing campaigns you will emerge from the war
with the laurels of victory upon your head. Lose
battles but win wars.
Several years ago, I had the privilege to
interview Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks zt”l. I
asked him:
When we look at your life and productivity,
whether the trajectory of ascending to the chief
rabbinate, publishing 30 books, 17 honorary
degrees, being named a Lord, etc., it just seems
that you have had success after success, triumph
after triumph. Have you ever experienced
failure? Have you ever had any challenges that
you couldn’t overcome and what gave you the
tenacity to persevere?

He was taken aback, even amused by my
question, and this was his response:
Ha! Have I ever experienced failure?! My
goodness me! Oooh! [Laughter.] I nearly failed
my first year in university. I nearly failed my
second year in university. I was turned down for
virtually every job that I applied for. Since I was
a kid, I wanted to write a book. I started when I
was 20 and I gave it every minute of spare time
that I had. Even when Elaine and I went to a
concert I would be writing notes during
intervals or between movements during a
symphony. Yet, I failed for 20 years! From 20 to
40 I had a whole huge file cabinet of books I
started and never finished.
What changed is I happened to be reading the
preface to “Plays Unpleasant” by George
Bernard Shaw. It opens by saying that if you’re
going to write a book, write it by the time
you’re 40 or forget it. I thought it was Min
Hashamayim. Someone is telling me something
because I had no idea why I happened to read
that passage by that writer at that time. I thought
to myself that it was my last chance. So, I wrote
my first book at 40 and then I wrote a book a
year ever since.
Winston Churchill put it beautifully: “Success
is going from failure to failure without loss of
enthusiasm.” The secret was marrying someone
who believes in you and then to just keep going.
Never stop! All of the things that came much
later, most of them unexpected – very moving
but not the ikkar – it’s just “keeping on going”
day after day.
That wonderful Medrash in hakdama of Ein
Yaakov asks what is the main pasuk in the
Torah? One [Tanna] said that it’s loving your
fellow man, כמוך לרעך ואהבת. A second said
ישראל שמע, it’s about accepting the yoke of
Heaven. Then, Ben Pazzi says אחד הכבש את
בבקר תעשה… bringing the daily sacrifice in the
morning and in the evening. It’s about
Shacharis, Mincha, Maariv. That’s life! You
keep hammering away and eventually you’ll
get there.
The only thing that is absolutely necessary is
that you have to key into your mental satellite
navigation system, your destination. Because if
you don’t know where you’re trying to get to,
you’ll never get there. I knew I wanted to write
a book. It took 20 years of failure until I finally
succeeded in the twenty-first year.
It is not a failure to acknowledge, recognize,
and call out failure by its name. Giannis is
objectively wrong: there are failures in sports,
just like there are failures in life. Not all failures
are bad, and we shouldn’t be afraid to experience
them or to name them. On the contrary, by
properly naming them, owning them, and
learning from them, we can use them to propel
ourselves to greater successes than we ever
thought possible.